How's the Sirius XM satellite radio monopoly working out for subscribers? Not so well. Now that Sirius XM is the only game in town, it's nudging up fees for subscribers. Nice!
The one and only satellite radio company's boasts of its ever-increasing subscriber base are gone now, and the decline is significant. The number floating around the Internet is a loss of 400,000 subscribers. That still leaves 18.6 million, but there's no way of knowing how many of that number are full-price-paying subscribers.
Could the subscriber losses be attributed to recent price hikes? The family plan package went from $6.99 to $8.99 a month and there's a monthly $2.99 fee to receive Sirius XM stations over the Internet. That service was previously free.
Back in March of last year I asked who was going to pay for the merger, and now we know. We've lost favorite channels and pay more for the service. So please explain why the merger was such a swell idea?
And what about Howard Stern? His megabucks contract is nearing its end; can Sirius XM hang on to the former terrestrial radio god now that he's faded into near oblivion? Hunkered down on satellite radio, Stern's visibility ain't what it used to be.
But if the 2 million Stern fans paid an extra $2 a month for the privilege of hearing his semi-daily genius, would that help Sirius XM show its first-ever profit?
Over the past year or so, Sirius' signal quality has worsened. Again, the post-merger performance woes are widespread. My Sirius signals have improved somewhat in the last two months, but I still experience signal dropouts lasting a few seconds several times a day.
How about you?
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(Credit:
Steve Guttenberg)
Sirius Satellite Radio has a lot on its plate. Shock jock Howard Stern is already making noises about leaving after his contract expires in a couple of years, the stock price is in the tank, and the company has huge debt.
All of that shouldn't matter to subscribers, of which I am one. But the frequent signal dropouts are really getting out of hand.
I had similar problems in the early days, but after a while, the dropouts became rare. Months would go by without signal interruptions, but about six months ago, the off-and-on signal problems returned.
Sometimes, the dropout lasts just a few seconds but occurs many times an hour. My Sirius home radio hasn't budged since I first got it many years ago, and my antenna is pretty much in the same place it has always been, but lately, the signal regularly disappears for minutes at a time before sputtering back to life.
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